Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters

“There’s only one way to defeat the sorrow and sadness of life—with laughter and rejoicing. Bring out the good dishes….”

One of the many marvelous minor characters in Rohinton Mistry’s new novel is a man named Vilas Rane, a salesman at the Bombay Book Mart whose sideline is writing letters for illiterate laborers who’ve come to the city from distant villages. His clients pour out their hearts to him, and, in one of three languages (Hindi, Marathi, or Gujarati), at the rate of three rupees per page, he composes a narrative.

Although he’s chided by a friend for not being a good businessman—if a customer is in the midst of something crucial when he runs out of money, Vilas lets him continue free of charge—he is a good man. He is a kind of novelist, turning heartache and tribulation into words. Like Mistry, he feels a profound respect for “the ongoing drama of family matters, the endless tragedy and comedy.”

At one point Vilas offers his own response to a book he’s recently read, “a novel about the Emergency”—a book that sounds a lot like Mistry’s previous novel, the harrowing epic A Fine Balance. It is, he says, “a big book, full of horrors, real as life. But also full of life and the laughter and dignity of ordinary people. One hundred percent honest—made me laugh and cry as I read it. But some reviewers said no, no, things were not that bad.” Family Matters is likewise a big book, full of life, full of laughter and tears.

Mistry’s novel is the story of Nariman Vakeel’s family. He is a Parsi widower, a retired professor, living with his stepdaughter, Coomy, and stepson, Jal. At age 79, he is facing as bravely as he can the indignities of old age: the tremors of Parkinson’s disease, failing eyesight, the nagging strictures of his stepdaughter—“his shrunken life.” Nariman is likewise haunted by his past, his sleep tormented by memories of a doomed love affair with a Catholic woman and the disastrous marriage arranged for him with Coomy and Jal’s mother. 

When Nariman breaks his ankle, his stepchildren prove unwilling to provide the care he requires. The two of them—Coomy, full of resentment, and timid Jal, forever fiddling with his outdated hearing aid, conveniently deaf to what he’d rather not hear—contrive to bring Nariman to live with his daughter, Roxana, and her family in their tiny two-room flat.

The novel is a wonderfully perceptive and sometimes hilarious exploration of the complexities of family life. Roxana’s sons love their grandfather dearly, the younger, 9-year-old Jehangir especially. But they’re shaken by the new tensions in the household, their father’s anger, the quarrels over money (“If only he could earn some money for Mummy-Daddy,” thinks Jehangir.) Roxana’s husband, Yezad, respects the old man but hates the mess of illness and infirmity in his home.

Family Matters is also a great city novel. Mistry’s 1990s Bombay is every bit as vividly wondrous and horrifying as Charles Dickens’ 19th-century London. Vikram Kapur, Yezad’s boss at Bombay Sporting Good Emporium, thinks of Bombay as a beautiful woman whom he loves despite what he calls her blemishes (“her slums, her broken sewers, her corrupt and criminal politicians”). “Bombay makes room for everybody,” he says. “Migrants, businessmen, perverts, politicians, holy men, gamblers.”

Within the city of 14 million, there are gestures of inexplicable kindness and acts of unspeakable brutality. It is a city of divisions—where even schoolboys form cricket teams along ethnic and religious lines, where atrocities are committed by fanatics in the name of religion—but also a place where on a train platform, the hands of strangers—Hindu, Muslim, Dalit, Parsi, Christian, all simply fellow passengers—reach out and lift a man to safety.

Everywhere is the stink of our common humanity—from the crowded Bombay trains to a dying man’s bed. Lying in Parsi General, Nariman wonders what lesson, what enlightenment might be acquired in the ward, perhaps only this: “That young or old, rich or poor, we all stank at the other end.” Everywhere there are signs of disintegration—an old man’s body, a family, a great city. 

And in the face of that, what? There is some solace in the sweet smell of sandalwood smoke at the fire-temple. There is the distinctively Parsi brand of humor: “The ability to laugh n the face of darkness.” And there is compassion. “If you knew a person long enough,” reflects Yezad, “he could elicit every kind of emotion from you…envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion…without exception.”

To see clearly the fragile and terrible beauty of the world—and the human heart—and to affirm our humanity and connectedness—that is the genius of Mistry. Born in Bombay, now living near Toronto, Mistry may very well be the best novelist writing in English today. Family Matters is his second masterpiece, a novel of great wisdom, beauty, and power—a book to be treasured.

—The Buffalo News